Gelia Castillo (Philippine National Scientist and long-time IRRI consultant) on her interest in rice and contributing to IRRI as a consultant
I got my PhD degree in 1960 [in rural sociology from Cornell], had a couple of babies, and, then, in 1963, I became involved in a project involving a pilot approach to agricultural and rural development. It was done in six villages at the edge of Laguna [province in the Philippines]. In the beginning, when you're a new PhD you think you know more than anybody else, so, when they first asked me to join the project, I said no, no, no, I'm not interested. Then, after they can ask you two or three times, they don't ask you anymore. So, then I felt the world was passing me by and I wasn't in it. So, after all, I decided I wanted to be part of it. I was in charge of the research and evaluation component of the project. It was implemented by the Farm and Home Development Project at UPLB (University of the Philippines Los Baños). And this had quite a bit of Ford Foundation and Cornell components in it.
I was really interested in rice before IRRI was created. I don't know why—perhaps it's because it's something that we eat every day. We can't do without it and it's something that you find among both rich and poor and you can't ignore it. It's always there; no matter what happens, it's always there. If it's not there, you better find it, you know. More than that, in agriculture, rice could be grown, at that time [the early 1960s], in 6 months. Of course, now, I think it's about 120 days. So, it's about 4 months or less and you can easily see the product within that period. But, most of all, it is a product of science that has reached the farthest corner of this country. There are not many products of science that have touched the common man as much as rice—maybe vaccines, too. So, this is terribly important to me.
In the beginning, I wasn't sure that having an institute like IRRI within the neighborhood of UPLB, which was so poor at that time and the contrast was so great, was a good idea. I remember very well when the secretary of education visited IRRI and he looked and looked and finally said, "I cannot see the connection between the man who plants rice and eats rice and this fantastic building." Because, at that time, IRRI was just a standout compared to UPLB. The housing was terrible at UPLB. Of course, there were a lot of critics who said, "If they just give us the money, we can do it." That was the thinking. And the thinking also was that the Filipino rice scientists were not given as much credit.
Well, I was a visiting professor at Cornell when the new rice variety [IR8] was released. Before that, I gave a seminar at the International Agricultural Development Program and I said that farmers will not adopt these new varieties because they are "Cadillac" varieties compared to what farmers were using and, of course, IRRI heard about it and some of them were upset. Why is she saying that?
Then, I came home in 1967 when I got involved with Randy [Barker in IRRI's Agricultural Economics Department]. So, when I saw how farmers had responded [to the new varieties], that's when I produced the book (in 1975), All in a Grain of Rice [A Review of Philippine Studies on the Social and Economic Implications of the New Rice Technology]. People asked me, why is it not published by IRRI [officially, it was published by the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research for Agriculture]? I said I didn't want IRRI to publish it because, at that time, the miracle rice was very controversial and if I said positive things about it, people would think it's because IRRI paid for the book. I wanted to maintain the independence of the book.
At that time, when the controversy was raging, journalists, economists, and what have you were coming to IRRI. But IRRI didn't know that after they visited IRRI, they would go to me to find out what I had to say. Was I saying the same thing that IRRI scientists said? That was the time when I had written the book. The grant to write that book was $3,000, believe it or not. The Ford Foundation's position was, if she's going to write about IRRI and IRRI varieties, why shouldn't IRRI pay for it? I said, "No, I don't want IRRI to pay for it." But then they said, "We've got to get some contribution from IRRI." That was when Randy [Barker] said, "We'll set aside $3,000 for you to travel to other international centers, so it will not really be for the book. But I never spent that money [myself] because then our project needed more money and I said to Randy, "Why don't you use that money to cover our further needs. So that's how it came out. I spent 18 months writing that book and it was not difficult to do because all my graduate students and everybody else on campus at U.P. Diliman were writing about the impact of the Green Revolution. So, it was easy to put things together.
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